Tom Chatfield

Tom Chatfield is an author, editor, essayist, game theorist and sometime thinker; his book on the culture of video games, "Fun Inc.", is published by Virgin Books in the UK and Pegasus in the US.

The former arts and books editor at Prospect magazine, Tom now writes widely in the national press, including for the Observer, Independent, Sunday Times, Wired, New Statesman, Times Literary Supplement and Prospect. He took a doctorate in literature and taught at St John's College, Oxford, before moving to London in 2005.

Tom has done design, writing and creative consultancy work for a number of online games and media companies, including Mind Candy, Grex, Red Glasses and Intervox, and speaks regularly on technology, media and gaming. His latest project involves writing and design work on a new game for the award-winning British games company Preloaded.

As well as radio and television work, Tom's 2010 appearances include the RSA; authors@Google; TED Global; the Bath, LSE, Swindon and Edinburgh literature festivals; the House of Commons; the Games Based Learning conference; GameCamp; the World Congress on Information Technology; the London Book Fair; the Hay philosophy festival; the Channel 4 Education conference; Science Foo Camp; the OpenTech conference; the School of Life; and the Liberal Democrat, Labour and Conservative party conferences.

He's the proud owner of several computers, a PS3, an XBox 360, a Wii, a DS, and more emulators and ancient consoles than you can shake several sticks at. He plays jazz piano whenever he can find the time, and tweets at @TomChatfield.